


Oil And Octane (I Won't Even Look Back)

by waterofthemoon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Community: spnland, Established Relationship, M/M, One Shot, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Romance, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterofthemoon/pseuds/waterofthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's not that he wants to get away from Dean, it's that he wants to learn how all his moving parts work without Dean to make them move.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oil And Octane (I Won't Even Look Back)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over a year ago for the [**spnland**](http://spnland.livejournal.com/profile) inanimate objects writing challenge, but I forgot to repost most of the stuff I wrote for that community, so here we go. There's sort of an extended metaphor thing going on here, and it's one of my favorite things I've ever written. Thanks to [**clex_monkie89**](http://clex-monkie89.livejournal.com/profile) for looking this over!

They don't fit in her backseat anymore.

Sam's all legs now, lanky as anything and full of rebellion. He wants out, out, away, a chance to stop spinning his wheels and wearing the treads down to nothing. It's an urge she can understand, the pull of going anywhere but here, but that's not what he wants, either. He wants a place to stay, a place he can call his own and mean it. She'd be insulted, but he's never been like her boy.

Dean, now—Dean's like her, never a dreamer but full of wanderlust just the same. He's growing into his muscles, strong and solid, true American steel under a softness he wants to deny. Dependable, but Sam doesn't want to depend on him anymore, and she knows it wrecks him to see the ways that Sam pulls away, mile by mile.

Dean wants freedom, too, but not from the life. He'll stay with her forever if she treats him right—the endless back roads and yellow lines that lead to beds and food and adrenaline and bed again, blood and maps and fear and pretty girls who are never quite what he wants. Dean only wants the freedom to pick his own road for them, to go where the hunt and his whims take him, not to always follow the road John chooses. He'd follow John to the end of the earth, but he can't be obedient forever.

She was there the first time Sam and Dean clumsily pushed their lips together in her backseat, stuttering over the words and touches like speed bumps even as they reached out with desperation. She wasn't surprised. She'd seen the denial hunching Dean's shoulders, the wanton shame in Sam's eyes, the love that still stretches bright and boundless between them like a desert horizon.

That was years and miles ago, thousands of clicks on the odometer, and as hard as it was for them to come together then, the idea of maybe-separating is that much harder for them now. They fit together like essential parts, gas line and engine, and she doesn't know how Dean will be able to keep driving, even though she knows he will.

Sam stretches his legs out now, takes up all the room and then some. No room for Dean and John to steer his life for him, to push him down a road he doesn't want to take—it's not that he wants to get away from Dean, it's that he wants to learn how all his moving parts work without Dean to make them move. She's felt the way they move together. John hasn't seen it, but John doesn't notice the things she does, and he doesn't understand the theory of mechanics, though he keeps her tuned with a steady hand. To make a thing run, you have to give it a little gas and let it go, even as far as the western coast.

Dean knows the theory even if he doesn't like what it implies, and that's why she knows he won't stop Sam when Sam says it's time to go. John says go, and Dean says how fast; Sam says go, and Dean says how far.

When Sam's gone, he'll pack the trunk with one less bag, let John stab out a new course, and run himself on fumes so he won't notice missing Sam in the rearview. He'll turn the music up loud, and she'll keep the road steady for him and John, and when Dean can't keep going alone, she'll carry him back to California, an inevitable intersection ahead.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Oil and Octane (I Won't Even Look Back)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/574023) by [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/pseuds/colls)




End file.
